2/37 — Repentance
"Adam received certain words from his Lord, and God accepted his repentance. He is the one who accepts repentance again and again, the merciful."
The finest point of the verse is here. Adam does not find the words of repentance himself; he receives them from his Lord.
The possibility of return, then, is a gift given afterwards to the one who wants to return. A person feels remorse, but he has to be taught even how to express his remorse. The door of repentance is not opened by the effort of the one repenting; it has already been left open.
What the words were the Qurʾān gives elsewhere: "Our Lord! We have wronged ourselves. If You do not forgive us and have mercy on us, we shall surely be among the losers" (al-Aʿrāf 7/23).
Note the structure of this prayer: the taking on of the fault ("we have wronged ourselves"), the production of no excuse, and an unconditional request. Compared with the stance of Iblīs the difference is clear — Iblīs spoke too, but instead of accepting his fault he justified it, and even loaded the fault onto God ("Because You have led me astray…", al-Aʿrāf 7/16).
The two beings were in the same situation: they broke the command. What makes the difference is what they did afterwards.
Root t-w-b: to turn, to come back. And what is striking is this: the same root is used both of the servant and of God.
The turning, then, goes in two directions. The Qurʾān says this very plainly in one place: "Then He turned to them, that they might turn" (al-Tawba 9/118) — God's turning comes before the servant's turning. The servant is able to turn because he has already been turned to.
The pattern تَوَّاب also conveys intensity: one who accepts again and again, continually. Repentance is not a one-time affair.
This verse has a heavy consequence for how the human being sees himself. In the Qurʾānic narrative the fall:
- Has been forgiven. Adam comes down to the earth as one already pardoned; not as one in debt.
- Is not inherited. The Qurʾān establishes this principle generally as well: "No bearer of burdens bears the burden of another" (al-Anʿām 6/164). Later generations are not held responsible for Adam's slip.
- Is not a loss of status but the beginning of a task. The descent is framed not as a punishment but as the actual beginning of the office of khalīfa — indeed that office had already been announced in verse 30, before the fall. The earth was the goal; the garden was a preparation.
I write this not in order to criticise other traditions of belief but to show the Qurʾān's own inner logic. These three items mean that the human being sees himself not as guilty by birth but as responsible by birth.